Paul Nijjar's Internet Landfill -- Firehosehttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/
Paul Nijjar's Internet Landfill -- FirehoseOntario PC Leadership Racehttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/opc-leadership/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/opc-leadership/
blatherelectionspoliticsFri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -05002018-03-10T01:24:03Z<h1>Ontario PC Leadership Race</h1>
<p>Today the Ontario Progressive Conservatives elect a new leader. I am
writing this before I know the results.</p>
<p>The previous leader was Patrick Brown. He was a surprise victor in the
last leadership race, beating the expected winner Christine Elliott.
Brown positioned himself as a moderate, Red Tory leader, in contrast
to his predecessor Tim Hudak. He made a lot of people unhappy when he
flip-flopped on the Liberal plan to redo the sex-education curriculum.
He also advocated switching from Ontario's cap-and-trade system to a
carbon tax. Other conservatives don't want either a carbon tax or a
cap-and-trade system, because either climate change is real or we
ought not to be addressing it via government policy.</p>
<p>There are only a few months left until the next provincial election (I
believe it is scheduled for June 6?). People are very unhappy with
Kathleen Wynne (and I am too, but probably for different reasons).
People saw the PCs as a shoo-in for the next election, so
politician-wannabes fought fierce and acrimonious battles to secure
provincial nominations.</p>
<p>Then all of a sudden allegations of sexual impropriety were levelled
against Patrick Brown. He resigned as leader, and other party members
threw him under the bus. They accused him of inflating membership
numbers and of other corruption. They distanced themselves as far as
possible from the leader who was supposed to be a shoo-in as the next
Premier of Ontario. Then the PCs held a new leadership race, which
ends today.</p>
<p>I have not been following the race closely. Most of what I know I
heard from podcasts of <em>The Agenda</em>. On that show I listened to <a href="https://tvo.org/video/programs/the-agenda-with-steve-paikin/the-ontario-pc-leadership-debate">a
debate</a> between the four contenders for the position. Subsequent
to that debate Patrick Brown re-entered the race, saying that his name
had been cleared of the allegations. Then he dropped out again. That
leaves us with four nominees: Tanya Granic Allen, Caroline Mulroney,
Christine Elliott (again) and Doug Ford.</p>
<p>Man. What a tire fire. Based on the debate, here are my relatively
uninformed opinions:</p>
<p><strong>Tanya Granic Allen:</strong> She is the avowed social conservative of the
group. She claims not to be a one-issue candidate, but she is obsessed
with the sex-ed curriculum and could not answer basic questions
unrelated to it, such as naming ONE OTHER change that needs to be made
to Ontario's education system. If the PC party was ever to split into
libertarians and social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, she
would be right at home in the social conservative wing.</p>
<p>Oh, and her suggestions for reforming the sex-ed curriculum? She has
none. She says she will consult with parents, which is fancy speak for
"she has no ideas". In the meantime she would put the existing sex-ed
curriculum on hold, which means that kids won't get sex education
until she gets around to putting in a new system.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline Mulroney:</strong> her father is Brian, and she is running on the
strength of her father's name. She has no political experience, has
never been an MP, and yet is running for a position that will very
likely turn into the premiership. That's not going to work.</p>
<p>My guess is that she is running to lose, in the hopes that she will be
rewarded with a cabinet spot (the same way most of the Ontario Liberal
leadership candidates were rewarded during their last leadership
race). Fair enough. I disagree with her talking points, but maybe she
has potential. She came across as more thoughtful and better-spoken
than your average political rookie.</p>
<p>I know it is harsh to say so, but let's name the elephant in the room:
if it was not for her last name, nobody would be giving her a second
look. She would be as much of a fringe candidate as Granic Allen.</p>
<p>And honestly Brian has not done much for his reputation since leaving
office. He has been embroiled in scandals of his own. But nostalgia
makes the heart grow fonder.</p>
<p><strong>Christine Elliott:</strong> She is the establishment candidate. If she loses
it will be a big scandal. Boy is she a politican, though. She is
veering to the right so that people will not mistake her for a Red
Tory. She is against a carbon tax (everybody is against a carbon tax
in this race) even though she knows better. She can't go full Blue
Tory, though. She still talks about health care and education a lot.</p>
<p>I dislike her because she is a backstabber. I am not referring to
Patrick Brown's downfall (I have no evidence that she was involved,
although I have my suspicions), but the way she has backstabbed
Kathleen Wynne. After losing the leadership Elliott supposedly retired
from politics. Kathleen Wynne's government awarded her a cushy job as
patient ombudsman for Ontario. Subsequently, Elliott went <a href="https://tvo.org/video/programs/the-agenda-with-steve-paikin/the-patient-ombudsman-will-see-you-now">on the
record</a>
treating Wynne as if she was a colleague and a human being. Now she
has nothing to say but ill for Wynne, and furthermore she does not
even mention her old job other than to criticize the Liberals. That is
hypocritical and backstabbing.</p>
<p>I cannot see her not winning this race. It is almost as if this
leadership race is a sham intended to appoint Elliott to the
position establishment Tories wanted her in from the beginning.</p>
<p><strong>Doug Ford</strong>: Oh man. Some part of me wants him to win, but that part
is evil. Fortunately, he won't win. He's like his late brother Rob,
but without the charisma. Apparently he thinks he is still running to
be Toronto mayor, because all of is talking points are about Toronto
city council. And it is insane that on the one hand Patrick Brown lost
his job because of sexual allegations, but on the other Doug Ford is
allowed to run when there is SO MUCH DIRT on the Ford brothers.</p>
<p>One of these people is highly likely to become the next premier of
Ontario. You're welcome.</p>
Let's Not Talkhttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/not-talk/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/not-talk/
blatherdepressionfiefdomshealthmoodrageWed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -05002018-02-01T06:03:20Z<h1>Let's Not Talk</h1>
<p>Supposedly our corporate overlords at Bell have decided that today is
the day to talk about our mental illnesses. If there is one thing I
have learned, it is that NOBODY wants to hear about my mental
illnesses. Nobody cares.</p>
<p>Disclose mental illness to an employer? Goodbye employability.</p>
<p>Disclose mental illness to your acquaintances? People look awkwardly
at you and say platitudes, and then find excuses to leave (unless you
are in crisis and they can play the hero). Disclose your mental
illness too frequently? That is self indulgence, so goodbye acquaintances.</p>
<p>Disclose your mental illness to health professionals? Great. Now you
have a "history of mental illness" which can and will be used against
you if you ever get in trouble.</p>
<p>Disclose your mental illness to anybody else? Ha ha ha.</p>
<p>Maybe it is fine to disclose mental illness when you are all cured.
Then you have an inspirational story to tell. Just don't be mentally
ill at the time.</p>
<p>Maybe it is okay to disclose mental illness to mental health
professionals who care about you exactly as long as they are being
paid to do so, and maintain their professional distance while feigning
empathy at you.</p>
<p>Thanks for nothing, Bell Canada. Enjoy your positive PR.</p>
Fear of Missing Outhttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/fomo/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/fomo/
anxietyblatherFri, 26 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -05002018-02-01T06:04:43Z<h1>Fear of Missing Out</h1>
<p>Here is an embarrassing admission: I suffer from fear of missing out.</p>
<p>I am an ignoramus when it comes to popular cultural events. I haven't read Harry Potter books, seen any Star Wars film past the Phantom Menace, watched any of the golden age of TV, etc etc etc. I don't know the new music or the new trends. There are a lot of young twentysomethings at my new work so I see that Canada Goose jackets and jeans with big holes in the legs are in, but that's it.</p>
<p>I subscribe to too many podcasts and want to listen to them all. It's getting out of control. I have to drop some but can't let go.</p>
<p>I am a grumpy old person around all new technology. I don't even know how to use a smartphone. This is not a good look for a technology person.</p>
<p>I worry that missing out will make me more and more obsolete in this
modern world. I think this is an appropriate worry. At the cult there
would be people who were proud of not using computers or email. I
viewed those people as stubborn and obsolete. Now I have become
stubborn and obsolete too.</p>
<p>My attention is limited. Maybe there are some good guidelines about
what would be worth catching up on, but I don't know what they are.</p>
<p>At the very least, I think I will have to start using social media and
participating in the surveillance economy to get by. But I am still
resistant.</p>
The Jobsolescence Rhetorical Devicehttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/jobsolescence-rhetoric/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/jobsolescence-rhetoric/
blathercapitalismeconomicstechnologyworkThu, 18 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -05002018-01-18T05:39:46Z<h1>The Jobsolesence Rhetorical Device</h1>
<p>There is a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/375-your-apps-are-watching-you-sugarcane-jet-fuel-and-more-1.4434160/how-ai-is-helping-treat-people-with-depression-1.4434182">story on
Spark</a>
that repeats a common claim. This is some deep-learning startup that
wants to model me psychologically so that they can classify my
brain according to what Big Pharma product would work best for
treating depression.</p>
<p>The claim is: "We aren't trying to replace doctors. We want them to
work more efficiently!"</p>
<p>This is ALWAYS a lie.</p>
<p>First they say this to assuage fears of job loss. If doctors do not
adopt this technology it will die, and that is unacceptable.</p>
<p>Next they bring up Africa. They say that Africa is poor and why don't
we use this technology to do a similar job to doctors for these
people? (I wish I could say "bring up poor countries" but in fact they
always use Africa as their example.)</p>
<p>Next they bring up the enormous number of people affected by the
problem. Wouldn't it be great to use technology to reach out to these
people who are suffering now?</p>
<p>Next we say we can get rid of the low-level workers, saying that they
can "go off and do more interesting work".</p>
<p>Next they bring up the spiralling costs of health care. A
disruptor comes in and gets rid of the doctors, because the existing
system is so expensive.</p>
<p>Then we argue that only old, out-of-touch people would ever
want doctors. The technological replacement is much more convenient
and efficient. The kids are all perfectly okay without doctors.
Why are you such a Luddite?</p>
<p>Then we get rid of doctors.</p>
<p>Replace "doctors" with whatever field is being "enhanced" by
technology.</p>
<p>I am not making a claim about whether getting rid of doctors is a good
or a bad thing. I am pointing out that the argument that some
disruptive technology is "not trying to get rid of X" when it is clear
that the technology threatens X is always false.</p>
Wishful Thinking 005: Local Calendarshttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/wishful-thinking005-calendars/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2018/wishful-thinking005-calendars/
blatherconsumerismfiefdomskitchener-waterloowishful-thinkingFri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -05002018-01-13T17:26:16Z<h1>Wishful Thinking 005: Local Calendars</h1>
<p>Last year I wrote some scripts to <a href="https://github.com/pnijjar/google-calendar-helpers">pull events from the Google
Calendar API</a>.
I originally put together these scripts to generate RSS feeds for
<a href="http://watcamp.com">Watcamp</a>, but I soon extended the scripts to
generate an email newsletter as well (which you can <a href="https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/watcamp-newsletter_kwlug.org">subscribe
to</a>).</p>
<p>I adapted the scripts to generate an events email for the Spectrum
clearinghouse of LGBTQ+ events (which you can receive if you sign up
on the <a href="http://listserv.thinkers.org/mailman/listinfo/rainbow_listserv.thinkers.org">rainbow mailing
list</a>).
Now <a href="https://hivewr.ca">Hive Waterloo</a> may be interested in a similar
events calendar for STEM and digital diversity-related events (which
you cannot subscribe to yet, but which I hope is coming soon).</p>
<p>On the surface these newsletters are not exciting. In practice they
are really convenient.</p>
<p>Now that I have this hammer I see a lot of nails.</p>
<h2>Calendars/Newsletters I Wish Existed</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>There are many places that hold free movie showings for the
community. The KPL has a regular series, as does the Commons Studio.
There are sometimes movie showings at the University of Waterloo and
at CIGI. In the summer the Movies in the Park people (used to?) put
on screenings at Waterloo Park, and the Kitchener Downtown people
have done this as well. I would like to see these disparate
sources aggregated into one calendar, and then that calendar used to
publish a listing of free movies.</p>
<p>I think a consolidated listing of regular movie screenings that
charge admission would be fine too, but I am less interested in
this. When people feel like seeing a movie, they already know where
to look. In contrast these free screenings often suffer
from low attendance.</p></li>
<li><p>Generalizing the above, it would be good if there were consolidated
listings of free entertainment events in the region. There are
actually a bunch of different calendars out there.
<a href="http://www.explorewaterlooregion.com">http://www.explorewaterlooregion.com</a> is one, and both the
Record and the Kitchener Post have paltry listings nobody looks at)
but if I want to use these resources I end up needing to visit their
sites, which is a dealbreaker for me. Plus, of course, none of the
sites are comprehensive, but I am not sure that is a solvable
problem.</p></li>
<li><p>Having a listing of local festivals would be amazing for groups like
Fair Vote Canada, which want to have display booths for events. But
this calendar is different from the others, because people would
need to know about events far enough in advance that they can
register for the festivals.</p></li>
<li><p>Watcamp does a great job of advertising tech-related events in the
region, including some academic talks. But there are many other
talks and events happening around town that I do not know about. For
example, the University of Waterloo maintains an events calendar at
<a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/events">https://uwaterloo.ca/events</a>, but the RSS feeds are useless because
they only record 10 upcoming events. The
Math Faculty has a great database at
<a href="https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~wnotice/notice_prgms/wreg/view_notice.pl">https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~wnotice/notice_prgms/wreg/view_notice.pl</a>
but it is inaccessible unless you visit the web page. Why is there
not a unified calendar containing a bunch of publicly-accessible
academic talks?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These are only a few of the interesting calendars that could exist.
There are no doubt many more.</p>
<h2>Calendar Infrastructure</h2>
<p>Andrew Cant is maintaining a fantastic list of local resources here:
<a href="https://gitlab.com/acant/kwdashboard.ca/blob/master/README.md">https://gitlab.com/acant/kwdashboard.ca/blob/master/README.md</a> .
There are lots of potential event sources here.</p>
<p>I wish I had access to a domain name (and the money to pay for it
indefinitely) so that we could host a domain with links to calendars
and signups for curated event emails. <a href="https://www.indieservenetworks.com/">IndieServe
Networks</a> may be willing to host
such a domain and provide mailing lists (but this is not guaranteed).</p>
<p>I don't like to admit this, but probably these event listings will
need a bunch of "Share this!" buttons to drive new traffic to the
events lists.</p>
<p>Being able to pull events from Google calendars is fine (and I am glad
that this functionality exists) but there should be scripts that pull
from arbitrary iCal feeds and turn them into newsletters too. In an
ideal world we would be able to pull/scrape from many different
sources and aggregate them into a unified calendar easily. But being
able to pull well-formed iCal feeds would be a good start.</p>
<p>There are two big bottlenecks to making this wishlist come true. The
first is people power. Watcamp works because Chris Craig and Bob
Jonkman spend a few hours a week selecting events from various sources
and consolidating them into one calendar. I feel that some human
curation is unavoidable. As computer nerds we want to automate
everything, but building software to automate aggregation and curation
takes people power too. I feel that there is some low-hanging fruit
that can be automated away, and then there needs to be teams of human
curators to put together the final product. Where do those people come
from? What makes them stick around?</p>
<p>One principle of sustainability I have learned the hard way is that
easy and fast matters much more than perfect. It does not take that
much time to keep Watcamp updated, so it stays updated. If it takes a
lot of work to publish events on these new calendars then the
calendars will wither away quickly. Similarly, if the people looking
at the calendar need to do a lot of work to keep up with listings,
then nobody will look at the calendars (which is why I feel
iCal/RSS/newsletters are such a win).</p>
<p>The second big bottleneck is developing audiences for these calendars.
Watcamp is fantastic, but few people use it. There are currently 17
people subscribed to the email newsletter of Watcamp, which is
pathetic. I believe some social media promotion could get that number
up to hundreds of voluntary subscribers, but I am not the person to
lead such a social media campaign. Other calendars will face the same
issue.</p>
<p>There is already a lot of fragmentation in this space (look at how
many aggregators there are already!). There is a real danger that this
resource will make the fragmentation worse, not better.</p>
<h2>Fiefdoms and Walled Gardens</h2>
<p>But what about Facebook?</p>
<p>There are a few large players in this space. Facebook is the gorilla,
but locally Meetup.com and Eventbrite and Ticketfi are players as
well. Most people publish events to these behemoths. Why is that not
good enough?</p>
<p>I want to live in a world where you do not need a membership to some
walled garden in order to find out what events are happening locally.</p>
<p>I also want to avoid filter bubble effects. I have a Meetup account,
and Meetup is okay for sending me notifications for meetups I have
joined. But it is sketchy about telling me about other meetups that
might interest me. I don't know why it promotes certain groups to me.
I don't know how much those groups paid Meetup so that it would let me
know about them. I don't know what groups Meetup is hiding from me
because it thinks (correctly or not) that I would not be interested in
them.</p>
<p>All of these problems are amplified on Facebook. There is no way
for me to subscribe to events listings that are published on Facebook
unless I am a member of Facebook. Why should I have to be a member of
a social network in order to find out about and attend events in my
local community? There is no good reason for this.</p>
<p>The bad reason is that this is all part of the surveillance economy. I
don't love depending on Google calendar for events listings (and I
like the surveillance link-shortener URLs in those newsletters even
less, even though I set them up!) but I really like the fact that
people can find out about events via the RSS feeds or email
newsletters without needing a Google account at all.</p>
<p>Some events that are currently advertised on Facebook are intended to
be member-only affairs. That's fine; such events should not appear in
these public calendars or these email newsletters. But there are many
other events which are intended to be public, and to me it seems wrong
that these are locked up behind Facebook's walled garden.</p>
Predictablehttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/predictable/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/predictable/
blatherdepressionmoodnavel-gazingFri, 29 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -05002018-01-01T22:03:24Z<h1>Predictable</h1>
<p>Would you like to predict whether my mood will be bad or okay on a
particular day? It's easy:</p>
<ul>
<li>Is the weather nice (warm, sunny)? If so I will be in a better mood.
If the weather is grey or cold or dark I won't.</li>
<li>Have I been getting enough sleep? If so then I will be in a better
mood. Otherwise I won't. Six hours of sleep is bad to the point
where I can barely function. Four hours of sleep is catastrophic. In
either case I will be upset and spend lots of dollars and calories
on junk food, which will make me feel worse the next day. (Hello
akrasia.)</li>
<li>Have I been exercising? If not, my mood will be bad.</li>
<li>Are my anxieties bad? If I am freaking out about insect infestations
or chronic pain or cancer then my mood will be bad. If I am in my
baseline state about freaking out about my weight I might be okay,
but if I had a bad weigh-in this morning then my mood will be worse.
Work (or lack of it) frequently factors into this.</li>
</ul>
<p>I am tempted to declare that these are the complete set of factors
determining my moods, which is not true but not all that far from the
truth. It is depressing just how predictable I am.</p>
Autonomyhttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/autonomy/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/autonomy/
blathernavel-gazingrelationshipsWed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -05002018-01-01T22:02:40Z<h1>Autonomy</h1>
<p>Something clicked for me this December. I understood (maybe for the
first time) just how important autonomy is to me. It may be the
driving force in my life.</p>
<p>This should not have been a new insight. When I worked at the cult, my
grandboss occasionally commented the degree to which I valued freedom.
I saw her point (refusing to work full time, wanting flexible hours,
resisting orders when I saw more important priorities) but the word
"freedom" did not sit well with me. It conjured images of war
("Operating Enduring Freedom") and the Second Amendment and
exploitative libertarianism ("you have the freedom to live under
bridges") and even the Free Software movement ("you have the
obligation to give away your work and not make a living", and please
spare me your cherry-picked counterexamples). Even if I was obsessed
with freedom, I did not want to be associated with these other things.</p>
<p>Two experiences this December made things click. The first came in the
context of marking our final exam. The instructors agreed to pay for
pizza for our hard-working TAs. Some instructors decided to do me a
kindness by paying for my share, and I resisted vehemently. I may have
been the poor cousin in that group (being the only instructor not on
the Ontario Sunshine list) but it was incredibly important to me to
pay for my share. I did not want to be a charity case. I had agreed to
help pay for the pizza and I wanted to follow through. I was asked why
I can't accept gifts graciously, and my answer was "obligation."</p>
<p>The second experience involved some ruminations on Christmas. This has
been a difficult Christmas break for me, but on the whole I feel
incredibly grateful not to be caught up in the Christmas grind. I
thought about the obligation to buy presents for others and felt
horrified. Then I thought about receiving presents and I felt more
horrified. There is something about receiving gifts (or as I punctuate
them, "gifts") that rubs me the wrong way.</p>
<p>Obligation. Coercion. Charity. I recoil from these things. I am no
saint. I am a compulsive eater and a glutton. I crave material things.
I am notorious for lusting after other people's discards. But
something in me resists any and all interactions that might put me in
debt to others. I want autonomy. I want to be free of obligation. And
I go to great lengths to be autonomous, even when it costs me a lot to
do so.</p>
<p>What clicked this month was the ridiculous degree to which this
craving for autonomy (and associated aversion to obligation) rules my
life.</p>
<h2>Debt</h2>
<p>I hate being in debt. All my adult life, I have avoided any situation
in which I might be in debt to others financially.</p>
<p>I will never be able to afford a house. Occasionally I have daydreamed
about owning property, but nowhere in my daydreams will you find a
mortgage. The idea of paying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to a
bank every month for twenty years freaks me out in a way that paying
hundreds of dollars in rent to a landlord does not. If I have to, I
can walk away from a rental situation and exercise my libertarian
freedom to live under a bridge. Having a mortgage makes that more
difficult. So I will never own property, and I will remain poor.</p>
<p>Similarly, I will probably never drive a car. The only way I would
consider owning a car is if I could purchase one outright.</p>
<p>If I had any illusions about being a tech startup millionnaire I
should lay them to rest, because becoming a startup millionnaire
almost always involves receiving seed funding, which must be paid
back with interest.</p>
<p>During my last year of university I faced a choice. I did not have
suffiicient money to both pay tuition and rent, and I was not about to
forgo tuition. I had to decide whether to apply for financial aid or
to accept the consequences of not paying rent. I opted to avoid paying
rent, which ended up working out okay but was an incredibly dumb thing
to do. The upside is that I graduated from university without debt,
which gave me options later on. The downside is that I lived illegally
for eight months.</p>
<p>If I have a credit rating, I don't have much of one. I don't have
credit cards. I don't pay monthly bills in my own name. I have never
taken out a loan. When donating money to causes I care about, I only
make one-time donations, even though everybody hates this; they want
the stability of monthly payments, but I refuse to take on any more
monthly commitments than absolutely necessary. I doubt I will ever
have a cellphone plan, which makes me unemployable. I ought to join a
gym but I would only do so if I could have a year long contract that I
could pay in a lump sum, because I don't want to be on the hook for
monthly fees.</p>
<p>I feel a great aversion to being on social assistance. This is why I
have obsessed over saving half my income for years. The way I see it,
having savings buys me autonomy. It gives me the freedom to refuse
jobs and situations that are bad for me. It gives me a financial
cushion to shield me from my bad judgements and habits. My life would
be much more stressful without this financial cushion, even if I was
able to live paycheque-to-paycheque. When that financial cushion is
gone I will be out of options for remaining alive.</p>
<p>Of course, I am a hypocrite about this. I skate at the ice rink
without paying for it. When "free food" is available I scarf it down
as if I have not eaten for a month. I make unnecessary trips to the
doctor, which is paid for with other people's tax money. But in any
situation where I might be held personally accountable for my
profligate habits, I suddenly develop the ability to refuse any
transaction that might put me in debt.</p>
<h2>Relationships</h2>
<p>If I don't want the obligations of Christmas presents, how in the
world would I deal with the multi-decade commitments of raising
children? <a href="http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/./2014/childless/">thank goodness</a> I never had children.</p>
<p>What about intimate relationships? My ideal setup would consist of one
or more people with whom I am on friendly terms, and with whom I am
intimate exactly as long as it is mutually rewarding. This setup is so
common that it has a name. Such people are called "fair-weather
friends", and nobody wants them because they flit away as soon as
things get tough. There is a reason that "for better or for worse, for
richer or for poorer" is included on wedding vows.</p>
<p>What about regular friends? There are some good reasons I don't have
many. My refusal to budge on certain practices (not getting into cars,
not eating out at restaurants) is a dealbreaker for most. Once in a
while I will feel forced into situations I did not consent to. Then I
get mad and I usually lose that friendship. In recent years I have
been trying to be better about not imposing my will on others, but
given how judgemental I am this has not worked out well.</p>
<p>I have cut off ties with my biological parents. The degree to which I
was controlled, expected to act on command, and forced to do some
unpleasant things scarred me. In later years I tried to re-initiate
communications with my mother, but she could not respect my autonomy,
so we are no longer in communication and will not be again.</p>
<h3>Control vs Consent</h3>
<p>The counterargument to being a fair-weather friend is that all too
often I stick with situations and people longer than I should. Once I
commit to something then I will tend to stick with that commitment
even though I am no longer having fun.</p>
<p>Maybe the difference is that when I consent to something then I am the
one who makes the decision. Unfortunately I then feel bound by that
decision until everything blows up.</p>
<h2>At Work</h2>
<p>The problem with work is that coercion is part of the deal. If you
want to get paid you follow the rules, regardless of whether those
rules are just. All too often I find myself resisting rules I feel are
stupid or unjust. It does not help that I have a deep mistrust of
institutions and the ways institutions prioritize their own survival
over everything else.</p>
<p>Usually my resistance takes the form of refusal. I just refrain from
doing whatever unpleasant thing is expected of me. This has gotten me
in trouble in the past and no doubt it will do so in the future.</p>
<p>Occasionally I will resist by attempting to change the system. Once in
a while this works. But when it doesn't I feel even more frustrated.</p>
<p>The counterargument to this is that I am not entirely pigheaded, and I
am capable of choosing my battles. When things are unasthetic but
inconsequential I try to let them slide. When things are unjust but
beyond my ability to change I make snarky comments and write angry
blog posts. As always I am a hypocrite; all too often I let unjust
things slide because I am borderline unemployable and do not want to
be fired.</p>
<p>While we are on that topic: walking off the job feels much better to
me than being fired does. If I am walking off the job then I am the
one in control.</p>
<p>All of this presumes that I actually get work. As I discovered last
year, this is difficult for me, and again autonomy is to blame.
I keep finding companies and keep getting turned off because the
things they do are either uninteresting or unethical. These days I
feel that every job requires ethical compromises, although I do not
understand why. When I sense the kinds of ethical compromises required
to participate in the work force my inclination is to avoid even
trying to apply for those jobs. On those few occasions when I do apply
for jobs and get interviews I am unwilling to give employers the
answers they want about ethical compromise. So it should come as no
surprise that people don't want to hire me.</p>
<p>I also want autonomy over my work schedule. When I am tired I want to
sleep, not trudge into work for 9am or 10am. When I am working then I
don't want to be disturbed. I have a bad habit of being a night owl,
which means that all too often I will be at work into the wee hours of
the night and then unavailable the next day. All of these habits makes
finding and maintaining work more difficult.</p>
<p>My tendency at work is to find something that needs to be done and
then do it, regardless of what I am supposed to be doing. When my
goals and the goals of the organization are in alignment then that
works well. Otherwise it doesn't.</p>
<p>I am not willing to compromise my personal life for the sake of work.
Stories about people being fired for their personal off-the-job
actions make me very angry. In a similar vein, I am not willing to
censor what I write on this blog for the sake of my employer, or for
the sake of future employers. This entry alone is getting me in a lot
of trouble.</p>
<p>I have not yet had to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) but they
are par for the course. I think I would find this difficult, although
in other situations I have kept secrets on behalf of my workplace.</p>
<h2>Dystopia</h2>
<p>Most of my dystopian fantasies have to do with loss of power and
control.</p>
<p>I have often worried about getting into trouble with the law and
ending up in jail. I guess being in jail would be worse than the
process of getting arrested by the police, but both would be awful.</p>
<p>Look: police might be necessary in society. But that does not mean I
like them. To me they represent the epitome of coercive force. When
interacting with police you must do exactly what they want, as
deferentially as possible. When dealing with the police you have no
rights, regardless of what the lawyers want you to believe. If you try
to assert your rights then the police will make your life hell in
other ways.</p>
<p>This is not a problem of bad apples. It is embedded in police culture.
Police are granted a monopoly on force by the state, and it corrupts
them. Their founding mythologies of sheep and sheepdogs worsens the
problem. They adopt models like "to serve and protect" and "people
helping people" but they do not believe these things. No police
officer I have ever interacted with has had the least interest in
helping people like me. At best their interest is in "keeping the
peace" (which means that those who suffer quietly are ignored and
those who suffer loudly get apprehended under the Mental Health Act,
are locked up for hours and get gossiped about within earshot).
At worst? I think we know what happens at worst: the police engage
in physical beatings and torture, using rubber hoses and phone
books to reduce bruising. They infiltrate legal gatherings and entrap
those people into committing violent acts, because any movement
that challenges existing power is a threat. They engage in universal
surveillance, and get neighbours to snitch on neighbours. So when the
police demand increased surveillance powers to "catch the bad guys" I
am instantly suspicious, because I am not interested in being
arbitrarily classified as a "bad guy". Again: such abuses of power are
not the result of a "few bad apples". They are inherent in police
culture. The specific mechanisms of abuse may change as the legal
system outlaws particular techniques, but the spirit of abuse will
continue. As a person who values autonomy, living in a police state
seems unbearable.</p>
<p>Then there is jail. Sometimes I romanticize jail as being a retreat
centre; a quiet place where there is no Internet and I can spend my
time alone. This is the opposite of jail, which is noisy and filled
with hurt people hurting people. That is plenty bad; worse is the
coercion. You have a rigid schedule of when you may be awake and when
you may be asleep, what you are and not allowed to do and when. You
are forced to participate in certain activities and not in others. I
imagine you have to be as deferential to security guards as you would
to police officers. And that is just the official coercion! Then there
are the internal pecking orders you have to abide by in order to avoid
getting beaten up or shanked. Maybe I would be able to get through the
experience of a jail term, but it would be difficult.</p>
<p>The dystopia I worry about the most these days psychological profiling
via surveillance. I suppose I ought to worry about other things like
the Calamity more, but I don't. Maybe this is because I know I would
not survive the Calamity, but I know we are building the surveillance
future as we speak. We are all feeding machine learning algorithms all
kinds of labelled training data about our psychological profiles, and
those algorithms are understanding our psychologies better and better.
Since the companies that operate these algorithms have as their
explicit goals things that are not in my interests (monopolizing my
attention, selling me stuff) I do not consent to the future they are
building. But it is not as if I get any say in the matter. Instead our
municipality decides to put sensors in its streetlamps, and I am
prohibited from visiting webpages unless I agree to the draconian
terms of service and "privacy policies". At some point these
algorithms will be able to understand and manipulate me
psychologically. I will be powerless to resist, but still blamed for
not exercising "self-control" (a convenient excuse, given that the
companies build their products to be as addictive as possible). If
these algorithms are successful then my autonomy will not be
diminished; it will be eliminated.</p>
<p>I know I write about this dystopia too frequently. None of you believe
that it is real. You are in good company. Nobody in Silicon Valley
believes it is real either. I see it as inevitable, and my only
hesitation in predicting it with 100% confidence is that I don't
understand why it is not here yet. Maybe our unending cravings for
novelty protect us? Maybe our psychologies are not as depressingly
predictable as I suspect? I don't know. What I do know is that we are
moving closer towards a surveillance dystopia, not further away from
one.</p>
<p>Maybe we are in the dystopia already. I am pretty caught
up in actions and activities that work against my long-term self
interest. Instead of getting work done or reading books or
exercising, I surf webpages and read Twitter messages about video
games I will never play. I hear advertisements for so-called
socially-responsible investing and feel bad because I do not
participate. I have never experienced the joy of watching a mattress
spring out of a small box. I don't have a domain name. Already I feel
as if I am missing out.</p>
<h2>Power Trip</h2>
<p>Is this all about power? Is all of this talk of autonomy really coded
language for "I want my own way and have a hissy fit when I don't get
it"? Yes.</p>
<p>I want to be left alone. I want to do what I feel like doing. I do not
want to be beholden to others, and I want to make decisions that are
in my own best interests. These are all expressions of power.</p>
<p>In an ideal world I would extend this philosophy to others. My right
to autonomy would end where your nose begins, because you should have
the right to your own autonomy. When we work together or interact
together, it would be voluntary, because both of us were deciding to
do so in ways that we would not regret later.</p>
<p>But we don't live in an ideal world. All too often I find myself
imposing my will upon others. Sometimes I will frame this as autonomy:
"I respect your autonomy in performing this action I don't like, but I
don't wish to participate. Therefore I will take my toys and go home,
which will happen to have the side effect of inhibiting you from doing
what you want." Sometimes I will be more direct. Sometimes I will lose
my temper. I hope I have been moderating these reactions as I have
aged, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it seems to me that the lens of autonomy explains both
how I perceive and how I act. Maybe in a little while I will wake up
with a different epiphany. Certainly, many consequences of this
obsession with autonomy are not serving me well.</p>
No Gene Cureshttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/no-gene-cures/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/no-gene-cures/
blathercapitalismfiefdomshealthThu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -05002017-12-14T07:17:44Z<h1>No Gene Cures</h1>
<p>I wish there was a cure for diabetes. The techno-utopians want me to
believe that gene therapies are on their way, and that a cure for
diabetes might not be far behind. But after listening to a Long Now
podcast about <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/oct/30/engineering-gene-safety/">engineering gene
safety</a>
those hopes have been dashed. Presenter Renee Wegryzn enthusiastically
talked about DARPA and about how genetic engineering was
revolutionizing everything. She mentioned something horrifying: RNA
therapies. In addition to gene therapies that target DNA molecules,
researchers are targeting RNA molecules. RNA molecules are generated
on the fly, and so RNA therapies (unlike DNA ones) would not be
permanent in the body. Wegryzn was enthusiastic about such research
because RNA therapies would be reversible, and therefore potentially
safer than DNA ones.</p>
<p>Do you see where this is going? DNA gene therapies are cures. They
would be applied once, and then (presumably) they would never been to
be applied again. RNA gene therapies are treatments. In order to keep
enjoying the effects of the therapy, the therapy would have to be
administered again and again. If you were a company that had the
choice of deploying a DNA therapy that would earn you a one-time fee
vs an RNA therapy that would earn you fees every time the therapy was
re-administered, which would you choose?</p>
<p>Individuals within those companies might be genuine in their beliefs
that they are looking for cures. The companies themselves want nothing
to do with cures. They want treatments. Very few cures will ever be
developed, because RNA treatments would be reversible and therefore
"safer". So there won't be a cure for diabetes, even if such a cure is
technologically possible to develop. Instead there will likely be a
bunch of treatments people can continue paying for for the rest of
their lives, which is not so different than the situation we are in
now.</p>
All or Nothinghttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/all-or-nothing/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/all-or-nothing/
blathereducationmidlife-crisisunemploymentuniversityworkSat, 02 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -05002017-12-27T23:57:58Z<h1>All or Nothing</h1>
<p>This is kind of part three of my long boring <a href="http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/./2017/sixmonths-nowork/">Six Months
In</a> series, even though it is now 13 months in
and I am in month four of a four-month teaching contract, doing a
sessional lectureship for a first year computer science course.</p>
<p>I am very grateful that I got this teaching gig. Many people think it
is more prestigious than what I was doing for the cult, but in fact it
is a step down the career ladder. I used to teach sessionals ten years
ago. Now I am teaching sessionals again.</p>
<p>My co-instructors are great. They are super-enthusiastic and on the
ball and super-smart. I am grateful to have had such great
co-instructors, but it has been difficult to keep up, and it is
painfully apparent that they are an order of magnitude better at
teaching than I am. I have forgotten most of my mathematical
background, and I am a slow lecturer and a slower programmer, and I
have real trouble coming up with creative assignment and test
questions the way they do. It's been hard, but I would much rather be
the weakest link in the teaching staff than the opposite.</p>
<p>I am lucky that the university decided to take a chance on me, and it
was a combination of networking and blind luck that I got the chance.
I had attended a talk at the university (a lecture by Silvio Micali
which was kind of amazing) and decided to ruin my health with junk
food at the C&amp;D afterwards. I ran into an old supervisor of mine, who
told me that sessionals might be available for the following term. So
I applied and I got something. The only people willing to hire me are
those whom I have worked for already, it seems. Nobody else is
remotely interested.</p>
<p>And the job is cushy. I don't need to do much marking. The course
content has been in place for a decade, and my co-instructors know the
tricks and traps intimately. My students are smart and engaged.
Because there are so many other instructors I don't even have to come
up with all of the assignments. And the pay is good -- one four month
contract almost gets me to
<a href="http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/./2017/income-levels/">income Level 1</a>, so I am not forced to beg for
sessionals each and every term. What do I have to complain about?</p>
<p>Nothing, I guess. Others have things much worse than I do. But I am
exhausted. It seems that every waking minute gets sucked up by this
course. I have tried to cordon off time for volunteering, and it has
been super-hard. Meanwhile the course hangs over my head continually.
I put time into getting things done and I am never
caught up. I have anxiety outbreaks before each and every lecture (and
then I run to buy food, which has made my weight balloon). I don't
like feeling incompetent. I don't like not being able to keep up with
the demands of the position. Honestly I feel as if I am in university
again. I feel as overwhelmed as I did when I was during my own
undergraduate career.</p>
<p>When I took this job I hoped it would be a part time job with a
full-time salary. But it has been a full-time job with a full-time
salary.</p>
<p>Maybe I am not cut out to be a sessional lecturer. Fair enough. Is
there anything I am cut out for? Is there any way that I can
contribute to others for money without exhausting myself?</p>
<p>Lately I have realized that I am selfish. If I work, I want to have
energy left over for other things. I want to contribute to something
meaningful, that I believe in. I want to receive enough money that I
can get by without feeling deprived, either now or when I am too old
to work. Unfortunately, these expectations are completely unrealistic,
and that makes me resentful.</p>
<p>Work feels as if it is all-or-nothing. If I want to be hired in my
field then I had better be prepared to hand over 110% of myself to my
job. Otherwise why would anybody hire me over the next person who is
willing to give 110%?</p>
<p>If I want to have energy left over for non-work things then I had
better be prepared to work in some dead-end, soul-crushing service
job, doing unreliable shift work for minimal pay. That is the gig
economy, and it is growing. The gig economy offers flexibility, but
sacrifices everything else.</p>
<p>Otherwise I should prepare to be chronically unemployed, in which case
I will be destitute.</p>
<p>I don't see any way out. Teaching sessionals is not the answer. At
best it is a compromise on all three axes. I don't feel as if I have
much time or energy for anything else. I've read my John Taylor
Gatto; I am not fooling myself into thinking that contributing to the
filtering of smart students is doing much good in the world. The pay
is good enough given how cushy the job is, but it won't make me
financially secure. Even if I wanted to teach sessionals for the rest
of my working life, I don't think I could do so. It is too exhausting.
So what do I do? Is there anything that would be a better fit? And if
there was, why should I have any expectations that I would be able to
get that job? Why should I have any expectations that I can even
discover that such jobs exist?</p>
<p>POSTSCRIPT: I was looking through old entries and ran across this:
<a href="http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/./demons/careers/">Clueless Paul Gets a Career</a> from 1998. It is
amazing to me that at least 80% of that entry still rings true. Have I
seriously not explored any different career paths for the last 20
years?</p>
Donut Inflationhttp://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/donut-inflation/http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/2017/donut-inflation/
blathercapitalismconsumerismfoodFri, 17 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -05002017-11-18T05:06:13Z<h1>Donut Inflation</h1>
<p>Tim Hortons recently played a sneaky trick in their donut pricing.
They used to offer regular donuts for $1.05 including tax. They also
had limited-run special donuts (like Nanaimo donuts or pumpkin spice
donuts) for more. Now they have introduced a third category:
"specialty donuts". Many of the donuts that used to be $1.05 are now
$1.25 because they have been reclassified.</p>
<p>I noticed this because the two donuts I usually buy are Boston Cream
and Canadian Maple. Both are filled with some kind of custard. They
are both now specialty donuts, while their unfilled cousins Chocolate
Dip and Maple Dip are still classified as regular. This sucks because
Boston Creme and Canadian Maple are (surprisingly) classified as
having fewer calories than other Tim Hortons options, so they were my
go-to choices.</p>
<p>Does $0.20 make a difference? To me it does. More importantly, this
move illustrates that Tim Horton's wants to increase its prices
without making people think they are increasing their prices. This is
inflation in action. Expect fewer and fewer donuts to be $1.05 as time
passes. With the minimum wage increases maybe all donuts will be $2.00
or more within a few years.</p>